Dead Presidents (Jay-Z song)

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Dead Presidents is a song by rapper Jay-Z off his first album, Reasonable Doubt. The record was the second official single off the album after "Can't Knock the Hustle". The instrumental aspect of this song was taken from a sample of Lonnie Liston Smith's "A Garden of Peace". The song's chorus uses a sample from "The World Is Yours" by Nas. The use of this sample is fairly notable in hip-hop history as both Nas and Jay-Z would later feud in 2001. Both rappers discussed the merit of the sampling in the song in individual "diss" records. Jay-Z references this argument in his song Takeover with the lines, "So yeah, I sampled your voice; you was usin' it wrong/You made it a hot line; I made it a hot song." This was a response to Nas rapping "You show off, I count dough off when you sample my voice" on an unofficial diss known as the "Stillmatic Freestyle" (not to be confused with the "Stillmatic" intro from the album of the same name.)

The song would also officially end the feud between the two rappers, as Jay-Z and Nas performed the song at Jay-Z's 2005 "I Declare War" concert.

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